Men

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Based on Gen. 37:2-20

     Vanna White, the glamorous star who shows the letters on Wheel of Fortune, was a leader in her church youth group in North Myrtle Beach, North Carolina.  Her pastor wrote about how he asked her, when she was a senior, what she was going to do after graduation.  She responded that her dream was to become a model, and so she was going to modeling school in Atlanta.

     This is how the pastor reacted:  "Vanna, no!"  I said. "Don't do that!  Those schools will do nothing but take  your money.  Nobody ever gets a job at one of those places.  You have brains! Ability!  You could be more than a model!"

     She thanked me politely and said, "But I have this dream of going to Hollywood and becoming an actress." "From North Myrtle Beach?"  I asked.  "Vanna, that only happens in movies.  This is crazy!" He goes on to say he is not surprised that her autobiography does not mention his ministerial influence.  He points out that Vanna makes more in one week than he makes in a whole year of giving good advice to aspiring teenagers.  His point in telling this story is to call attention to the fact that it is not wise to try and interfere with other people's dreams.

     A dream can be an escape from reality, but it can also be an alternative to a present inadequate reality.  A dream can provide an ideal toward which we strive and thereby change reality for the better.  In his book, Finding The Goal Posts, Lawrence Howe tells of such a dream in the life of Cecil Rhodes.  He was 22 years old when he conceived the idea of an international scholarship fund.  A plan that would bring the keenest minds from around the world to study together, and grow in their appreciation of the culture and learning of other lands.  Such a project would, of course, take millions of dollars, but with no money and a dream, Cecil Rhodes made out his will bequeathing millions of dollars to this noble cause.  Then he signed his name to his dream and went out into the world to back it up.

     He struggled against adversity; sometimes succeeding; sometimes failing, but before long he came into possession of the great Kimberly Diamond Mines in South Africa, and he became world famous for his fabulous wealth.  He was comparatively young yet when her fell prey to tuberculosis and he knew the end was near.  He called for his will to have it read.   He did not need to add anything to it except a paragraph of instructions to his lawyers advising them how to make his wealth available to fulfill his dream.  He did not even need to sign it, for he had done that years before.  As Howe said, "He literally signed his name beneath his ideals. He built great castles in the air, and then went out by hard work to put foundations beneath them..."  Here was a dreamer who built his castle from the top down.

     His dream was not an escape from the real, but an ideal he sought to make a part of the real. This kind of dream ought to be standard equipment in the mind of every Christian, young and old alike.  As Christians we are bound to be realistic, but we are not bound by reality, for our ideals are always to be far superior to the reality of what is, and they are to drive us on to change the real till it conforms to the ideal.

     In an article titled "Dreams: Pathway to Potential," Kent Hutcheson writes:
“A person who has dreams is filled with               
expectation, and no obstacle seems insurmountable.                
He had a positive attitude, is excited and is never bored.”

     This means that dreams are practically the same thing as faith. Listen to Heb.11:1, "What is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us...." Faith and dreams are one. It is a weak faith indeed that has no dreams of being more of what God wants you to be in the days ahead. Someone printed on a piece of stationary, "The poorest of all men is not the man without a cent but the man without a dream."

     In the Congressional Library over one of the entrances leading to the archives are these words:  "They build to low who build beneath the stars."  Thank God we have ideal that soars far beyond the furthest star into the very presence of God where Jesus sits at His right hand.  There is our ideal, and our dream, if it is divine, is to be conformed to His image. This morning I want you to consider with me a dreamer in the Old Testament whose life conformed to that of Christ in many ways. Joseph is one of the most widely known and loved characters of the Bible.  He is one of the few great heroes of the Bible whose life is not blotted by a fall.  Like Jesus, he was tempted, but remained faithful.  Like Jesus, his own received him not, and he was unjustly persecuted, but like Jesus, he forgave and became the savior of the very ones who hated him.  We want to consider his life from the point of view of the three results that can come into the life of the dreamer.

I.  DREAMS CAN CAUSE TENSION.

     Have  you ever wondered as you watch your children fight like animals, what good can possibly ever come of them? Jacob must have wondered this often as he watched his 12 boys growing  up.  There would be tension enough without creating special sore points as Jacob did. He showed such a special favoritism to Joseph that he made the other boys jealous to the point of hating him.  Joseph was the child of his first love Rachel, and he was born to him when he was 91 years old.  Jacob made no attempt to hide the fact that Joseph was special.  He broadcast it by making him a long robe of many colors.  This was the garment of an overseer-one who is superior.

     It was perfectly natural that Joseph was not popular with his brothers. This was not his fault, but it was the fault of Jacob showing favoritism. I read of a father who heard a knock on his bedroom door and he said, "Is that you pet?" "No it isn't pet, its only me." replied a little voice quivering with sorrow. The father's eyes were opened and that was the end of pet in that family. Jacob did not see his error, however, and so tension remained in his family.

     Then came the straw that broke the camels back. Joseph had a dream that only added fuel to the flame of hate already raging in his brothers hearts. He had a dream, and he shared it, that all his brother and even his mother and father would bow before him. It was a God given dream, of course, but the family just considered him an arrogant brat. Even his father rebuked him for such a dream.

     A somewhat similar relationship existed between Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer and his father. As a boy Watts had such a talent for poetry that he made his general conversation rhyme. His father tried to discourage it and one day he became so exasperated by Isaac's constant rhyme, he threatened to punish him in  a very un-poetic manner if he did it again. Being so much a part of him, he unconsciously did it again and his father picked up the rod. Isaac fell to his knees and pleaded, "dear father on me mercy take, and I will no more verses make."

     His father was disarmed and recognized his son was born to be a poet. He recognized his sons dream was God given, and so the tension was eased. But this was not the case with Joseph's family. Things went from bad to worse and so we see, not only can dreams cause tension, but-

II. DREAMS CAN COST TRIAL.

     Jacob sent Joseph to see if all was well with his brothers. When they saw him coming they plotted to get rid of this arrogant dreamer. They said we will kill him and then see what becomes of his dreams.

     The majority can never tolerate the dreams of the one who seems inferior to them. The man who dares to be different and put his dreams into practice must be prepared to face trials. When George Stephenson planned to draw a train of cars by steam at the rate of 14 miles per hour, he was regarded as a fit candidate for the madhouse, but he had a dream and he went for it. When Fulton proposed to use steam to navigate the Hudson river, men of science ridiculed him and called it  the silliest idea to ever enter a silly mind. Most scientific dreamers face the same criticism, but without these dreamers their is no progress.

     In the realm of social reform nothing would change without dreamers. Why do we have a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday? It is because he was a man who said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." The dream cost him his life, but it was a dream that changed our nation more than most of us can imagine.

     When William Carey shared his great dream of bringing the Gospel to India, he was criticized by theologians and politicians. His plan was publicly denounced in the House of Commons as the "mission of a lunatic." Even after his dream began to become reality, Christians expected the wrath of God to fall on him for this interference with God's business. Sidney Smith, a brilliant man of his day called the early missionaries, "a little detachment of maniacs." Today we know Carey as the Father of Modern Missions, and one of the great heroes of Christian history. But he had to pay a price to fulfill his God-given dream. Dreams are not free if you are determined to follow them. “The man is called a fool or knave, Or bigot plotting crime, Who for the advancement of his race Is wiser than his time. For him the hemlock shall distil. For him the ax be bared, For him the scaffold shall be built, For him the stake prepared. Him shall the scorn and wrath of men Persue with deadly aim, And malice, envy, spite and lies Shall desecrate his name.”               Author Unknown

     Joseph's dream cost him 13 years of trial. He was 17 when his brothers sold him into slavery and he was 30 before his dream was fulfilled.  During those 17 years his faith in his dream was tried to the utmost by the pit, Potipher's wife, and prison. Yet in perseverance, patience and purity he held fast to his dream and God honored him. We tend to think it is harder to stand for our ideals in our day, but nobody ever faced greater odds against him than Joseph. He stood alone with the majority always against him. It always seems to be that way for dreamers.

     Luther came to the point where he stood before his superiors and had to choose for safety and conformity, or for his God given convictions. He did not have an army  behind him. He stood alone and his decision changed the course of history. He said, "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me."

“The fighting heart may some day win.
The quitter never can.
There's many a battle turns
Upon the spirit of a man.”

     No young person has ever faced more pressure to be immoral than Joseph. Potipher's wife tried to seduce him. You can talk about all the pressure of modern times to entice you to forsake your Christian convictions, but they could never be harder to overcome than what faced Joseph. It was go to bed with her or go to prison. He refused to dash his dream to pieces with the hammer of lust and chose prison. That is an awful  price to pay for holding to a dream, but he paid it.

     In prison he got along well, but thanks to a forgetful and ungrateful butler, whose dream he interpreted, he had to remain in prison for 2 extra years. It was all so unjust and unfair, and he could have easily said phooey on the dream, but the fact is that is what was enabling him to hang in there. In all his trials we do not hear him complaining and rebelling and doubting. How could he do it? The answer is in the poem of Edgar Allen Poe,
“That holy dream-that holy dream, While all the world were chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam, A lonely spirit guiding.” It was a lonely road to travel, but Joseph traveled unyieldingly faithful to his dream and the God who inspired it. We have seen that dreams can cause tension and that dreams can cost trial, but the good news is our final point,

III. DREAMS CAN COME TRUE.

     The brothers said, let us cast him into the pit and we will see what will become of his dreams- and they did, for they saw the dream come true. Joseph never wavered through all his trials and even when the real was in utter contrast to the ideal he remained faithful until he finally came to be the prime minister of Egypt with the power of life and death. He used that power to save his family and thereby prepare the way for the great plan of God for the children of Israel.

     It is marvelous to see Joseph's attitude when he was in power.  What character he had.  He was faithful in prosperity as well as in adversity.  He never forsook his ideals.  No wonder the story of Joseph is one of the most popular in the world.  God entrusted His great plan in history to a 17 year old shepherd boy.  God could not have given a more clear demonstration of His faith in teenagers.  Give God a teenager who wants to build above the stars; a teenager who dreams of a life in God's will; a teenager whose ambition is to be like Christ and to be guided by Christ, and I'll show you a teenager that God is willing to use to change the course of history.  God wants teenagers, and pre-teenagers, and postteenagers who dream inspired dreams, and who live their lives according.

     Anyone can sit down and list reasons why a thing cannot be done, but the dedicated dreamer will go ahead and do it. The task of the church in winning the world is humanly impossible.  But God calls us to dream gloriously and then live for the glory of that dream. Are you laid low by dilemmas, Or are you lifted by dreams?

     Dream your own dreams.  Don't try to fit your life into somebody else's dream. The glass slipper would fit only Cinderella because that was her dream and nobody else's. Everybody wants to be somebody, but too often they want to be somebody else.  Do not dream of being somebody else, but dream of what God can do through you, for you have the same capacity to dream as anyone else.  Why do you think Lincoln was president when our nation went through the Civil War?  It was because Lincoln had a dream of a country where all the people were free. He never gave up that dream even though he had to endure great opposition.  He was willing to pay the price for his dream, and God saw to it that the slipper of victory fit his foot, and he became the man who set the slaves free, and saw his dream come true.  God uses dreamers of every age.  Edwin Markham wrote,
“Ah, great it is to believe the dream, As we stand in youth by the starry stream; But a greater thing is to fight life through, And say at the end, the dream is true.”

     Victor Frankl has become one of the great authors and speakers of the 20 th century. He survived Hitler's concentration camp, and he tells us why. "Others gave up hope. I dreamed. I dreamed that someday I would be here, telling you how I...survived the Nazi concentration camps.......in my dreams I have stood before you and said these words a thousand times." His dreams kept him going when the non-dreamers died in despair.

     Dreams will never come true if we go on sleeping.  Paul says in Rom. 13:11, now it is high time to awaken out of sleep. We must wake up and get into action to make our dreams come true.  It may take days, months, even years, but if we have a dream that is consistent with God's will, we will see some, much or all of it come true, and any part of a dream coming true is far better than having no dream to aim for and achieve. Someone wrote,

“Hold fast your dream within your heart,
Whatever might befall;
Let others laugh, if laugh they will,
But keep your dream through all.”

     Jammie Buchingham tells of a young woman he visited in prison.  She had been a part of the Charles Manson gang, and had been convicted on 7 counts of murder.  She was sentenced to die in the California gas chamber, but just before she was executed her sentence was changed to life in prison. Somebody sent her a Bible in the mail, and she just tossed it to one side and never looked at it once.  Unknown to her there were people who had the audacity to dream that such an awful person as her could become a child of God.  They prayed and sent her letters telling her of God's love.  She finally picked up the dusty Bible and began to read.  She had only known hate all her life.  When she read the life of Jesus, and saw His love for and tenderness toward the fallen, she realized that is what she had dreamed of all her life-to be loved and accepted.

      The Bible told her she could be forgiven and accepted if she opened her heart to Jesus.  She slipped off of her cot in that lonely cell and asked Jesus to come into her life and be her Savior. Susan Atkins is still in prison, but she is a free woman in Christ.  She has led a number of other women to Christ in the prison, and God has made her greatest dream come true, for she is loved and she is loving-the two greatest dreams anybody can have.  It looked as if her life would end as a nightmare, but the Gospel made her dare to dream again, and she discovered what God wants all people to discover; if we will dream the dreams God dreams for us, we will see our dreams come true.

     We have just started a new year, a new century, a new millennium and the one thing we know will be true of the future is that God will use dreamers to make a difference in time and eternity. Tony Compolo said, "Without personal dreams about the future, we are all dead." One of his goals in life is helping people dream bigger dreams.  The future for us as a church will depend upon its dreamers, and it is never too late to start dreaming. What can you do for this church? What can you do for this community? What can you do for your family, friends and neighbors? What can you do for yourself?  What can you do for the kingdom of God? What is your Dream?

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